In which i attempt to get back into the habit of drawing things, and/or where I post potentially useful After Effects info, expressions and ideas.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

I AM CLEVER.

A way to easily make a WHOLE LOAD of the same style title cards/lower thirds/whateverr with different info in the text fields.

I figured out (from misc threads on the creativecow forums) a way to set up a composition so you can just duplicate it and put the info you need in the title of the comp, and the text will change accordingly. You never even have to open them at all! Just copy, rename and drag the lot into the render queue.

The expression is: thisComp.name.split("_")[1]
It goes in 'Source Text'

I put an underscore as the 'split' character but you could use something else, just put whatever character you want in.split("*")

Just change the number in square brackets for each text layer to turn that text into the corresponding word/phrase in the comp title. It counts from zero; I usually leave that for a comp name and 1,2,3 and so on for each on-screen text.

Probably I could have been even CLEVERER but it works.

I'd also probably make one master comp and use expressions in the duplicated comps to connect to it each animated/positioned/scaled/font-size/etc value that might need to be changed, in preparation for the inevitable client amends... (u__u;)>